


Mike: leader and lover

by stillusesapencil



Series: an aching kind of growing [2]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Coming of Age, D&D, Dad!Steve, Depression, Emo!Mike, F/M, Fluff, Gen, and also the commas, and how his friends help him, i probably abused the italics, mike makes bad decisions, mostly rambling about mike and all the stuff he's been through, ted wheeler is an ass, the party loves each other so much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-13 08:29:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13566735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillusesapencil/pseuds/stillusesapencil
Summary: Mike is like a boy out of a fairy tale—he meets his true love, he loses her, and then he waits.Mike is the same in love and war: fierce and unrelenting.(Once upon a time, there was a boy, and he met a girl. She gave him her hand and he held on tight.)





	Mike: leader and lover

Mike met his soulmate, his one and only, at thirteen. Most people are in college, or out of college, in their twenties, (just plain _older_ ) before they meet the person they will spend the rest of their life with. But no. Mike meets El at thirteen and he falls in love in the span of a week and he will never leave her side. 

Mike grew up overnight. One day, he was a child, mastering his friend’s D&D games, and the next he loses his best friend and is expected to move on. He is told Will is dead, Will is gone. They have a _funeral_. Every piece of the puzzle has been filled out, clicked into place, you can go home now. Yet Mike still dares to hope. Mike will always hope. 

(When El disappears, Mike still hopes. He hoped for Will, and he hopes for El.) 

Mike met Will on the first day of kindergarten, and he never regrets it once. They hang out at his house, building legos and drawing and watching movies. Mike looks at Will’s scrawny slight frame and decides somewhere in the back of his six-year-old mind that he must protect this boy. Had anyone asked, he wouldn’t have been able to vocalize it, but this was his oath. To protect, to defend.

Lucas moves to town in second grade, adding to the school’s very small black population. He gets introduced to the class, naturally, but it takes about two weeks before Lucas hovers at the end of Mike and Will’s lunch table. “Can I sit here?”

Mike looks up. “Sure.”

Lucas sits down, eyeing him. “Why are you so surprised?”

“I’m not surprised,” Mike says hastily. “Nice shirt.” 

Lucas looks down at his plain blue shirt, then back up at Mike, suspicion in his eyes. 

“Sorry,” Mike says.

Will clears his throat. “Do you like Star Wars?”

Lucas nods, chewing his sandwich. 

“Mike and I are going to watch the holiday special when it airs, do you want to come?”

Lucas nods. 

The special is awful, but what is formed is not. They are friends now. Mike has two best friends. It’s wonderful.

Troy, of course, started picking on Lucas the minute he walked into the school. Lucas never says anything about it, but Mike knows. Troy hates people who are different. Lucas, by no fault of his own, is different. 

Mike and Will tell him off, making a wall in front of Lucas, until Lucas says, “I can do this, guys.” So they step back, letting Lucas fight his own battles, but always staying at his side. 

In third grade, Troy pushes Will into the gravel on the playground and Mike bloodies Troy’s nose, skinny fingers curled in a flimsy fist. He gets detention for a week. His parents ground him. He doesn’t care.

In fourth grade, Dustin joins them, bringing with him sass, a red and blue hat, and a slew of curse words. They bond over science and discovery, over AV and D&D. 

Troy doesn’t like Dustin either, frequently threatening to remove the rest of his teeth. “It’s cleidocranial dysplasia,” he lisps angrily. 

Mike tells Troy maybe he should go to the dentist, too, as his breath smells like a dead TaunTaun. Troy seems confused, and backs off for the day. 

“Thanks, Mike,” Dustin says. 

Mike shrugs, and they bike down the street. 

This is what he does. What is there to be grateful for? You don’t thank someone for doing their job. It is simply what is expected. 

They are a band of brothers, a circle of best friends. Mike is their dungeon master, their paladin, and their leader. He will defend them to the death.

Mike has always needed to protect people. It’s just that when they truly needed protection, there was nothing he could do. 

When Will first disappears Mike loses his best friend, and no one thinks to listen to him—except for the party. They go out into the woods, dark and raining, and there is a buzzcut girl in a drenched yellow shirt. Mike, like any good hero, takes her home.

_(Once upon a time there was a boy, and he met a girl.)_

He builds her a pillow fort, wanting her to be safe. That’s what forts are for, isn’t it? To feels safe? 

She says her name is Eleven, and he asks to call her El, and when she says, “Goodnight, Mike,” there’s something special about how she says his name. 

So he pretends to be sick the next day, and he can’t convince her to ring the doorbell, saying that ‘bad’ people were looking for her. 

He dresses her in the clothes he was wearing the day before (what else does he have? He can’t tell anybody), and offers her the first taste of real life—opening the recliner, eating eggos, exhibiting his toys. It’s then, as she laughs at the recliner and devours the Eggos (and ignores Yoda, but he’ll forgive her that), that he starts to fall for her.

It’s small at first, just a little warmth in his belly, a spark that felt different and new. He knew what it was like to find a new best friend, but this was something different. He likes it. 

Of course things are never going to go as Mike plans. They find Will’s body in the quarry, and El has lied, and Mike feels every piece of him break and crumble. 

_Friends don’t lie._ In his anger, he yells in El’s face and she whispers, “Sorry, Mike.” When she makes Will sing from the radio, Mike thinks it might be an apology. It hurts him that she believes that she has to apologize for things she did not do.

The party takes her to school, disguising her in Nancy’s hand-me-down dress and a blond wig Holly had for dress-up. When she comes out of the bathroom, looking confused and anxious, Mike feels his heart grow four sizes and El fills in all the space. 

“Pretty,” he breathes, and he means it. He feels Dustin’s and Lucas’ inquiring gaze, and he hastily adds, “Good. Pretty good,” and thinks it might be the first lie he’s told. 

From that moment on, everything El does just makes him love her more. She makes Troy pee his pants, and he loves her. She allows them listen to Will in the Upside Down, and he loves her. She tries to protect them from the “bad men,” and even then, he loves her. 

And then Lucas rebels. 

This is the way it is: Mike is the leader, Mike is the protector, and the others follow. Lucas is the warrior, Lucas is the fighter, and he listens to Mike. But in this moment, he rebels and he refuses to listen. It flips Mike’s world a little. His world is shifting and Lucas won’t listen, this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. 

El throws Lucas across the junkyard for touching Mike and then Mike breaks. _Why would you do that?_

He will be guilty about that for a long time, knowing that him yelling at El was the reason she left. But who could fault him, really? His best friend disappeared, potentially to another dimension, he’s been ignored by a lot of people, surely a small break must be forgiven? 

Lucas leaves. Dustin looks to Mike and sticks by his side, and they look for El. 

(Dustin is loyal, even when he believes he is not important. Dustin is the boy who chose people to love and will refuse to leave them, no matter the wounds of neglect.) 

On the edge of the quarry, Troy and James find them. They brandish knives, glinting blinding in the sun and Mike goes cold from the roots of his hair to the ends of his toenails. They mean business. When they grab Dustin, Mike feels like he can’t breathe. There is nothing he can do; he cannot save Dustin now. 

“Jump!” says Troy, “Or I cut out his teeth.”

“It’s okay Mike, I don’t need my teeth,” Dustin babbles hoarsely, panicked. 

Mike toes the edge of the cliff. There are so many variables here flying though his mind like a flock of crows, cawing danger and anger. 

Mike thinks of Dustin and Will and El and Lucas. He shifts his foot forward. 

He hears another croaking bark from Troy and Dustin. 

He jumps.

_One._

_Two._

_Three._

He stops. He freezes, in mid air, and then he falls _up_. 

He lands on the dust and gravel to see El, burning through the bullies with her eyes, a trickle of blood starting out of her nose. She strides toward them like a conquering soldier, jerking her head to break Troy’s arm. 

“Go,” she commands, and Mike swears the very earth is shaking beneath them.

Dustin scrambles away as Troy and James make a run for it. 

“That’s right!” Dustin whoops. “That’s our friend, and she’s crazy!” 

She faints.

He crawls to her, gently shaking her shoulder and calling her name. 

“Mike,” El whispers, “I’m sorry. The gate. I opened it. I’m the monster.” Tears puddle in the corners of her eyes. 

“You’re not the monster, El,” he says, staring at the dried trickle of blood from her nose. “You saved me. Do you understand? You saved me.” He looks into her teary troubled eyes. He pulls her to her knees and they hug, and Dustin drapes himself over them, a blanket of safe. 

Mike breathes in the smell of Dustin and El—dirt and sweat and _life_. He is alive. And he loves her. 

Everything starts happening faster. It’s a blur, starting with Lucas screaming about the bad men coming (so he came back, he didn’t rebel, Mike is still the leader). Then they are running and flipping vans and creating a suspension tank. 

It all happens to quickly. There is so little time and too much remember, and Mike scrabbles at the moments, tying them down and tethering them to his heart.

When they are in the middle school, and he sits across from her, tries his best to explain the snowball. She’s never seen snow, and she doesn’t know what dance means, and then she doesn’t understand when he says “someone you like.” 

How do you explain love to a girl who has only known apathy? A give and take? You do this and I do that? 

So he kisses her. It’s not a good kiss by any means. It’s his first kiss, after all, and no one’s first kiss is perfect, or even good. It’s just his lips pressings against hers for a second, feeling her suck in a quick breath, and his heart tripling in speed. Her eyes widen and the barest hint of a smile hovers at the edges of her lips.

And he loves her. 

He hasn’t even known her for a week, and he is in love. That’s the pure and simple truth. 

Too quickly they are captured and the demigorgon is coming for them and there is blood, blood everywhere and dead agents and they are running down the hall of the school into Mr. Clarke’s classroom.

Gunshots in the hall.

“Is it dead?” Mike asks.

One heartbeat. Two.

The door breaks down with a crash and the demigorgon enters. Mike hears himself screaming _Go go go_ like that will help, and they are hiding behind Lucas (Lucas, the ranger, Lucas the warrior) as he tries to kill the monster with rocks.

This is what it has come to: half-grown children with a rubber slingshot cowering behind a lab table and trying to save the world. 

With the impact of the stone, the demigorgon flies back into the chalkboard, sending cracks up the wall. Did a rock really hurt it that badly?

And then comes Eleven, walking with blood in her nose and ears and eyes and soul, walking with death in her step, death for the monster and death for her.

“Eleven stop!” Mike screams. Even now, he tries to protect her. 

She throws him against the cabinets and he can only watch as she slaughters the monster with her mind. It squishes and squirms against the chalkboard. 

El turns back to look at him and says, “Goodbye, Mike.”

He is crying. A wordless scream fills his mind. He loves her, shit, he loves her so much, and she is leaving him. 

The lights blink off.

The lights blink on.

She turns back to the demigorgon and stretches out her hand.

It screams, and she screams and they mingle with the screams in his mind and he clamps his hands over his ears so he can’t hear it but he can, he can, he will never stop hearing the screams—

The lights blink off.

The lights blink on.

And she is gone.

A cloud descends on Mike. Through the interrogation, through the clean-up, through endless interviews and papers he has to sign, he can only think of El. He aches, sharp and throbbing right though his very core. 

He doesn’t know what makes him do it, but that night he crawls back into the blanket fort and calls her name on the radio. He thought he’d seen her, but it must have been just an illusion, just wishful thinking, because there is no answer. Mike curls up under the table and he cries, burying his face into his pillow to muffle his cracked sobs. 

And so the story goes. 

Mike is like a boy out of a fairy tale—he meets his true love, he loses her, and then he waits. 

_(Once upon a time, there was a boy, and he met a girl. She gave him her hand and he held on tight.)_

His grades slip. It’s not that he’s not trying, he _is_ , but he can barely get out of bed in the morning. Food loses its flavor, and eating becomes a reflexive motion of moving his jaw up and down. He can’t sleep. His nights are filled with heavy thoughts of El, of heavy thoughts about Will, of heavy thoughts about himself.

He plagiarizes a paper, finds it’s all too easy to deceive the teachers, and carries on. He does what he needs to do.

His grades drop so severely Mr. Clarke calls him after class to talk about it.

“You used to be one of my best students,” he says. “What’s going on?”

Mike shrugs and refuses to meet his eyes.

“I want to help you. I know you’ve been through a tough time. Just let me know if there’s…if there’s anything I can do.”

Mike nods, keeping his eyes on the floor, and leaves. 

At first, he tries to talk to the boys about El—about how he misses her, how his world has been reduces to a hole in which she belongs.

They listen, and they try to understand, but they can’t. They are each dealing with their own demons, their own heartaches. Will has gone quiet and still in a way Mike doesn’t know how to handle, and Dustin and Lucas are able to pick themselves up and move on.

Mike stays in the same place, and calls El every night.

Sometime during the year when he waits for El (three-hundred fifty-three days), he realizes he can’t remember the last time he felt happy. He has fun with his friends, yes, he laughs and smiles and tells jokes, but happiness? No, that was lost somewhere behind him. It’s like he is empty inside, hollowed out. 

Mike lost his best friend, and then he lost his soulmate, and then he waits. Somewhere, he got stuck. He stagnated in his grief, just clinging to hope. He is hollow and empty. 

(It will not be until El walks in that he suddenly feels full again.)

It is good to have Will back. Mike is grateful and happy. With Will by his side once more, the party should once again be complete, but instead there is a new hole, an El-shaped hole. 

_I am our paladin, Will is our cleric, Dustin is our bard, Lucas is our ranger, and El is-was-is our mage._ It’s a thought that comes often. He plans campaigns and he finds himself drawn to challenges that would require a mage or be helped by a mage. He looks around the lunch table and thinks there should be one more chair. He sits under the pillow fort at night and whispers her name, and waits for an answer. 

She told him goodbye. She did not expect to come back or even live. And yet Mike still sits under his table, clutching his walkie-talkie and calling her name.

_(Once upon a time there was a boy, and he met a girl. She gave him her hand and he held on tight. But then her hand was ripped from his.)_

When he turns thirteen he wishes for El to come back, the same thing he’s wished every day. Sometime during the winter he gave up on wishes, but not on hope. Hope he clings to, for what is life without hope?

His mother tries. She desperately wants him to talk to her about it, but she just _doesn’t understand._ There is too much to say, too much to tell. 

Nancy does her best with her brother. She may not understand him, but she tries. She will always be there for him and he’s sure if he had any questions about girls or school or whatever, she would answer. And most of all, Nancy tries to understand about El. But Nancy lost someone, too, and it is too much handle more than one grief at a time.

Grief can steal your soul. Grief can steal your hope. Mike refused to allow it to steal from him. He may be floating, covered in the goop of sorrow, but he still holds onto his shining hope, and keeps it shining ever still. 

Mr. Wheeler has always regarded his only son as an annoyance and a disappointment. They wanted one child. Mike was the spare. (And Holly? Holly is forgotten.) Mr. Wheeler looks at Mike and sees a failed son. Mike is nothing he wanted—not athletic, not proper, not contained in the perfect 2.5 kids box. 

Mike is not good at sports, nor was he ever interested. His parents force him to try out for middle school basketball, and he fails miserably, red-faced, panting, and thoroughly embarrassed. Mike belongs in the dim of the AV room, playing with wires and electricity, or he belongs in his bedroom, surrounded by notebooks and maps and dice. 

Nancy got perfect grades. Nancy was a good girl. Mike came home with the torn knees and bloody knuckles and fell in love with things that could not exist. When people look at Mike and expect Nancy, they have another think coming. Nancy was firmly grounded in this world, concerned with things like school and boys. Mike wanted other worlds—ones with stars and magic.

Magic came to him in the shape of a girl with a buzzcut and a bloody nose. 

The year is not all bad. There are bright spots. Having Will back means a lot of sun has come back into Mike’s life. They have sleepovers and watch movies. They play games on Will’s living room floor. They have D&D campaigns, but not as many now. The arcade has come to town, and the pixelated graphics of a dragon are much more interesting than Mike writhing on the floor of his basement.

Mike tries not to resent it. Yet he and Lucas argue over the most pointless of things now, it seems like. Dustin always sighs and Will tries to make peace. Mike makes his grumpy face and huffs.

Lucas just won’t listen. It’s not fair. No one listens.

Mike spends time holding himself together with frayed threads, tying them round his ribcage to keep it in one piece. He finds himself at the quarry, remembering El striding in like a conquering hero. Mourning her striding to her death in the classroom. Remembering her whispering goodbye. Mourning the carefree bright-eyed boy who fell in love with her. 

He remembers the battle. He mourns her. He mourns himself. He wants to be joyful again. Wants to believe in magic again. 

Mike is the same in love and war: fierce and unrelenting.

Mike is a boy who stepped over from childhood to adulthood as swiftly as stepping over a crack in the sidewalk. The cracks formed in him, along his edges, into his soul. 

His parents expect him to act like an adult. What they don’t understand is that Mike is an adult in his own mind. What do his parents know of the love he lost? They never even loved each other. They tell him to fill two boxes of toys that mean more than they’d ever guess simply because El’s fingerprints are still on them.

It’s as if they forgot everything that happened, and expect him to forget, too.

In October, Max Mayfield moves to town. Lucas and Dustin are instantly smitten, and Lucas’ rebellion continues. She, for reasons Mike cannot understand, decides that she is worthy to be their “zoomer,” whatever the heck that is. 

It’s not that Mike doesn’t like her personally. It’s that his friends are trying to replace El. 

_(Once upon a time there was a boy, and he met a girl. She gave him her hand and he held on tight. But then her hand was ripped from his. He kept waiting and hoping she’d come back.)_

In the meantime, Dustin decides it’s a good idea to harbor a creature from the Upside Down, and Will gets captured again while his body is still visible.

Mike couldn’t protect him, again. Mike failed, again. 

(Yet it is Mike Will remembers when he lies possessed in the hospital bed. The Mind Flayer couldn’t take Mike from him, couldn’t defeat a love that great.)

He stares into Will’s clouded eyes in a shed and says becoming his friend is the best thing he’s ever done. 

(If that’s the best thing he’s ever done, then rescuing El is far beyond words.)

When the Byer’s house is surrounded by demodogs, Mike grabs a trophy and decides he will fight. No, it’s not a gun or a bat or even a wrist rocket, but dammit, Mike is going to protect and fight to his very last breath. He refuses to go down without giving one hell of a fight. 

And then.

El walks through the door.

Mike feels his chest fill and crack, and he thinks he’s going to explode. Tears are running down his cheeks, and she is alive. He was right, she’s alive. The world is right. 

And he loves her.

_(Once upon a time there was a boy, and he met a girl. She gave him her hand and he held on tight. But then her hand was ripped from his. He kept waiting and hoping she’d come back. When she returned, it felt like flying and falling and a bit like dying.)_

Hopper spent a year lying to him. For this, Mike will never forgive. Or perhaps he will, in time, but not yet. He has the rest of his life to spend with El, and eventually he will allow Hopper that year. He understands how Hopper thought secrecy was the best way to protect El. There is one thing Hopper and Mike will always agree upon, and that is that El must be protected at all costs. 

On the porch, El promises to come back. He’s so scared he’s never going to see her again, and he doesn’t even get to kiss her goodbye. He paces the Byer’s house, being watched by _Steve Harrington_ of all people. 

Steve tells him, “We’re on the bench!” and oh, Mike hears his father in Steve’s words. 

“This isn’t some stupid sports game!” Mike says, slamming his hands on the table, and then he and Lucas and Dustin and Max decide to fight the monster themselves. 

And then Billy Hargrove pulls up outside the Byers house.

Steve fails them, and Billy storms into the house, grabs Lucas by the collar and pins him to the wall.

Mike shouts for him to stop, but he knows better than to attack. First of all Mike is about 98 pounds of string bean, and second, Lucas likes to fight his own battles. Lucas knees Billy in the crotch, which gives Steve enough time to punch Billy.

Dustin is screaming for Steve to “Kick his ass, Steve! Kill that sonofabitch!” and things are breaking and crashing and Steve is losing. Billy sits on Steve to pummel him, and while the boys are screaming, it’s Max who does something. 

She jams the needle in Billy’s neck, threatens his dick with a baseball bat, and Mike decides the girl might not be so bad after all.

She holds up the keys to Billy’s car. 

They drag Billy into the yard—there’s no way they’re leaving him in the Byer’s house. 

“What about Steve?” Dustin asks. “We can’t just leave him here.”

“We can’t take him either! He’d freak out!”

“He’d freak out here, too, okay, Mike? Just let it go. He’s coming.”

Mike huffs, but they carry Steve between them, and Dustin comes sprinting from the Byer’s bathroom with a box of band aids and an ice pack.

“You really think that will help?” Lucas asks, and Dustin just glares at him before he starts putting little band aids all over his face. Mike takes the box and puts a rainbow one on his chin as Dustin holds the ice pack to Steve’s head.

Max drives them (speeds them? wrecks them?) to the tunnels, and Mike says, “Incredible.” 

“I told you,” she says. “Zoomer.”

Mike grins.

The set fire to the monster, and somewhere else El is closing the gate and the demon is writhing its way out of Will, and they win the war a second time.

And El is home. 

_(Once upon a time there was a boy, and he met a girl. She gave him her hand and he held on tight. But then her hand was ripped from his. He kept waiting and hoping she’d come back. When she returned, it felt like flying and falling and a bit like dying. They walked along the path, sometimes slow, sometimes fast, but always hand in hand.)_

In fourteen years, Mike Wheeler has lived more life than most people three times his age. He has loved, he has lost, and he has found. And from this, he will build. 

Things start getting better. He starts going over to El and Hopper’s cabin after school and on Saturday mornings. Sometimes El comes over to his house. 

El can’t go to school yet, but Hopper and Joyce are working to teach her. She loves to read. She loves everything, honestly, and every day is a new experience.

She’s not allowed in public often, but she joins the party’s gatherings and they play games and watch movies. 

Mike still watches over his shoulder for agents, checking the license plate of every spare car and avoiding energy workers like the plague. El sits on the back of his bike, sometimes, and he will take her from the cabin to his house. It’s not often. Hopper likes it better when she’s safe behind tinted car windows. Still, with El’s knees bracketing him and her arms around his waist, Mike feels a lot safer than he would any other way. 

They start playing D&D again, this time with Max and El included. El is a mage. Max is a rogue, the closest thing to a zoomer. She puts a lot of her points into dexterity and constitution, trying to be as fast as possible.

Mike finds out he actually likes Max. She’s a fighter, like Lucas and Mike, and she absolutely refuses to take any of his shit. He never apologizes for that first week when he tried to close her out (literally, she sat outside the AV club door). But they figure it out. 

The closest he ever gets is after a D&D session, when she is the last (aside from El) to leave. As she heads up the basement stairs, he calls after her, “Hey, Max!”

She looks over her shoulder in suspicion, so much like Lucas that first time that Mike understands why they fit together. 

“You’re pretty cool,” he says. “Zoomer.”

She smiles, a small tilt at the corner of her mouth. 

“You too, Mike.” 

And then she goes.

He takes down the blanket fort in the corner of the basement. He doesn’t need it any more, because he isn’t grieving any more, isn’t waiting anymore. He is now living, healing, growing. 

He and El go to the snowball and Mike is the happiest he has been in a full year. They kiss on the dance floor, and it’s much better than the first. And after all, they have a whole lifetime to get better.

For Christmas, he wants to give El a very special gift. He buys a cassette tape and shows up on Will’s doorstep. 

“Help me make a mixtape,” he says, nearly desperate, and they spend hours on Will’s floor, recording every song that made Mike think of El the year she was gone. He makes sure to get Every Breath You Take and Time After Time.

The day after Christmas, he gives it to her in private, rather than in front of the party. They play it and slow dance in her bedroom until Hopper comes home.

He shoots up almost a foot over that winter. He goes from being able to look El in the eyes to being able to look at the top of her head. He takes advantage of this, planting forehead kisses in greeting every time he sees her. Sometimes, when he comes over, she opens the door with her mind when he knocks, and doesn’t even look up from her book. She just presents her forehead for a kiss and continues reading. He sits beside her to do his homework or plan a campaign.

Hopper will walk in and find Mike on his couch with El by his side, and he will sigh and give Mike a _look_ , which Mike will understand. He never has intentions that are less than innocent, but perhaps Hopper cannot understand that. 

Hopper does apologize for hiding El. He explains he did it for El’s safety, and Mike understands that. 

(Hopper understands the desperation in Mike’s eyes, understands how it feels to lose someone.)

When he goes over to Hopper and El’s, Hopper starts having Mike help him with things. The cabin has a lot of work to be done yet, and so Mike helps paint and build. He might not be very strong, but he is willing. Sometimes Hopper offers to help with schoolwork, and Mike wrinkles his nose. Yet, after his fourth nigh-failed math test, Mike shuffles to the kitchen table with his homework in hand. 

“Are you any good at math?” he asks grudgingly.

Hopper hums and takes the paper. “Oh, algebra. I always skipped that class. You’re a better student than me.” He smiles at Mike and sets the paper down. “Let’s see what we can do here, huh?”

Once, Hopper comes home and ruffles El’s hair, pauses a second, and the ruffles Mike’s hair, too. They share a grin. 

At home, Mike’s house is tight and cold. His parents have arranged their features into masks of placid content, but something isn’t right. He goes to Nancy. 

“What’s up with mom and dad?” he asks, barging into her room, making her grunt in frustration.

He has to repeat his question before she answers.

Her face goes very still, and then she furrows her brows before saying slowly, “I think the only reason they don’t divorce is because they’re not supposed to.”

Mike turns that over in his brain before nodding. 

“It’ll all be okay, Mike,” Nancy says, but he hears the hopelessness in her voice.

“Is that what you said about Steve?” Mike says, and regrets it right away.

“That’s different,” Nancy says. “Just…if you can…take Holly with you when you leave the hosue.”

“Take Holly with me?” Mike bursts out. “No! She’s four! She’s…annoying!”

“Listen to me, Mike! She can’t stay here! Do you understand?”

Mike huffs, but nods. So, the next time Nancy is gone, Mike bundles Holly in her coat and mittens and puts her on the back of his bike.

He shows up at the cabin looking irritated, because it’s hard to keep a four-year-old on your bike, but she comes along. El is absolutely delighted at the prospect of Holly playing, so they sit on the floor and color and giggle and paint their nails. Hopper just rolls his eyes.

Fairly soon, Holly is coming along with many party gatherings, sitting on various laps and giving out plenty of hugs. Mike thinks that maybe having his sister come along isn’t such a bad idea. 

The party keeps growing, this time adding Steve Harrington. Of all people, Mike would have never guessed he ever hang out with Steve. Steve was his sister’s ex-boyfriend and a senior in high school. By anyone else’s standards, they were not supposed to socialize. 

Yet Dustin likes Steve, and Steve seems to like the rest of them, so he drives them places and tries to D&D once or twice. Mike doesn’t think he’s very good. Dustin thinks he’s amazing.

During basketball season, the party goes and sits in a little cluster and cheers for him, holding up signs and whooping. 

He graduates in the spring. Dustin’s mother leads a parade of teens to a row at the highschool, and they cheer their voices hoarse for him, just like they did at a basketball game.

That summer he cleans out the pool and has them all over, flipping burgers on the grill he with practiced ease he learned at his post-graduation job. In the middle of the summer, Hopper offers him a job taking over for Flo. 

El already goes to the station frequently. It’s safe now for her to come out sometimes as Hopper’s adopted daughter. She sits cross-legged on his desk, drawing or writing. Mike bikes to the station to join her. Hopper smiles at him, but keeps a watchful eye. 

Mike whispers to El, “Want to bike with me?”

She nods, but glances at Hopper. The message is clear: _He won’t think it’s safe._

Steve leans around the corner and winks at Mike. Mike frowns at him, shaking his head and narrowing his eyes. 

“Hey, Hop?” Steve says.

“Yeah?” Hopper grunts around his cigarette.

“Can you c’mere a second?”

Hopper sighs, hauling his feet off the desk. He plods around the corner, and behind his back, Steve motions at Mike and El to go. They scramble out the window like fugitives, giggling as they bike away. No harm is done. They’re only going to the quarry to sit on the edge of a cliff while holding hands and kissing a bit. 

(Steve understands about crushes, and Steve understands how the Wheelers love.)

Mike and El are teenagers in love, and being a little dumb is part of their job. If dumb means sneaking out to kiss in front of the tree where they met after Mike carves their initials into it, so be it.

_(Once upon a time there was a boy, and he met a girl. She gave him her hand and he held on tight. But then her hand was ripped from his. He kept waiting and hoping she’d come back. When she returned, it felt like flying and falling and a bit like dying. They walked along the path, sometimes slow, sometimes fast, but always hand in hand. If he fell, she steadied him; if she tripped, he helped her back up.) ___

__When summer hits and the days are warmer and Hopper relaxes more, they start to go back to the arcade. It’s fun, but Mike misses the delight of telling stories in his basement, of creating worlds with nothing more than his voice._ _

__Mike understands the magic of words, of making people fall into a world an fall in love with people and things that don’t exist. It was why he was the Dungeon Master—he could create the adventures._ _

__It’s Steve, surprisingly, who first suggests it to him, after catching him at the station, moping that he has a cool new campaign that no one wants to play. “Why don’t you just write the stories, kid?”_ _

__Mike blinks at him._ _

__“If you can write better than me, then you’ll probably be in good shape. And hey, if you need an editor, your sister’s not bad.”_ _

__So Mike goes out and buys a brand notebook from the five and dime and starts writing. At first, he writes about a campaign—dwarves and paladins and mages. But then he starts thinking about everything that happened in the last year, and starts over._ _

__He tells a story about a boy, who met a magic girl in the rain in the woods. He tells a story about a party of special people—a healer, a hunter, a zoomer, a bard, a magician, and their leader._ _

__Mike stores his full notebooks on his bedroom shelf. Someday, he will make them into stories to be read by many, but not yet. For now he just writes._ _

__It is not always perfect. Mike still has days when his limbs turn to sandbags and his head to stone. He still has days when food stops tasting good and he can’t even see the color in El’s eyes. Together, they learn to cope._ _

__“I just feel…down, a lot,” he heaves out. “Like the world is awful and it’ll never be good again.”_ _

__“It’s okay,” says El, leaning her head on his shoulder. “Everybody has bad days. And I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. Promise.”_ _

__“Promise,” he agrees._ _

__“It’s okay,” says Will, not meeting his eyes. “We’re going crazy together, remember?”_ _

__Mike nods and sighs. Will is so busy dealing with his own crazy, Mike feels guilty for burdening him. Will presses play on the mixtape again._ _

__“It’s okay,” says Max. “I get it. You wanna skateboard? That always makes me feel better.”_ _

__Mike steps on her board and rolls his way down the street. He doesn’t feel all the way better, but it does help._ _

__“It’s okay,” says Lucas. “Sorry, man. Wanna try and beat me in Atari?”_ _

__So they sit on his floor and dissolve into a computer-generated world._ _

__“It’s depression,” says Dustin. “I read about it.”_ _

__“Oh,” says Mike, feeling scooped hollow._ _

__“There’s ways to treat it,” Dustin says. “You can go to see a counselor or take medicine. Or get more exercise. Or take vitamin D. Or meditate and do yoga and shit. There’s a lot of ways to help.”_ _

__He doesn’t tell his father, because his father wouldn’t care. He doesn’t tell his mother, because she’s dealing with things of her own. She spends a lot of time in her room with the door locked. He doubts they’ll file for a divorce until he’s in college. Until then, he’s going to have to keep coming home to stiff emptiness and trading off Holly duty with Nancy._ _

__Between El and Erica Sinclair, Holly spends a lot of her time covered in pink sparkles and reading stories about princesses. She picks up sass from Erica and Max, and Steve even kneels down and teaches her how to swing a bat. Joyce Byers think’s she’s adorable, and knits her pink mittens. Dustin does puzzles with her and Lucas gives her piggy-back rides, and Jonathan tosses her up in the air and tells her she’s flying and Will sings to her._ _

__“She’s gonna be fine, kid,” Hopper says to Mike at the Byer’s house, while Holly is playing tag with Will and Dustin._ _

__Mike nods._ _

__“What about you, you gonna be okay?”_ _

__Mike nods again. “Yeah. I’ll be fine.”_ _

__Hopper raises a brow. “Let me know if you need anything.”_ _

__No, his parents aren’t divorcing officially, but his dad is getting a job in a different city and will be spending most of his time there. There used to be whispers about the Byers family, how Lonnie left Joyce with two boys. Now there are whispers about the Wheeler family, how Ted and Karen don’t talk and the children are left to fend for themselves. It’s not that Mike has to come home and cook dinner, like Jonathan did, it’s that his mother cooks dinner and doesn’t speak while they eat it._ _

__“I don’t want to be like them, Mike,” Nancy says, as their dad pulls out of the driveway to leave for a week._ _

__“You’re not,” Mike says softly._ _

__Nancy does a double take. “I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”_ _

__Mike shrugs. “You’re pretty okay.”_ _

__Nancy smiles. “You’re pretty okay, too.”_ _

__“Sorry I never paid you back that one time.”_ _

__“Mm. Two dollars and twenty-five cents. Such a great loss to my financial state.”_ _

__Mike digs into his pocket and pulls out a quarter. “Here. It’s all I’ve got.”_ _

__Nancy takes it and turns it over in her hand. “Thanks, Mike,” she says quietly._ _

__It’s more than just a quarter. It’s _no more secrets_ , it’s _everything will be okay_ , it’s _we’ll make it though this.__ _

__That night he goes over to El’s and they sit on the porch and cling to each other._ _

__“It’ll be okay, Mike,” she says._ _

__“I know.” He buries his nose in her hair. “I’ve got you, don’t I?”_ _

__She tilts her face up to be kissed._ _

__School is starting in a week, and El can’t go. She’s not ready. It’s going back to days of not seeing her for too long, of thinking about her from his desk. But they have tonight. The stars are bright against the velvet blue of the sky. And Mike has El, and El has Mike, and that’s the way it will be, forever._ _

_(Once upon a time there was a boy, and he met a girl. She gave him her hand and he held on tight. But then her hand was ripped from his. He kept waiting and hoping she’d come back. When she returned, it felt like flying and falling and a bit like dying. They walked along the path, sometimes slow, sometimes fast, but always hand in hand. If he fell, she steadied him; if she tripped, he helped her back up. They never lost each other, nor did they ever let go.)_

__Mike fell in love with magical worlds, ages and ages ago. And then he found his own magic, and he will never stop loving her. The road will not always be smooth, nor will it always be easy. There will be more monsters, some from other dimensions and some that have names like Billy or Troy, and still other monsters that will have names like trauma and depression._ _

__Mike thinks about the future. He thinks about high school and how he and El will go to every school dance together. He thinks about college. Sometimes, he thinks about beyond college, about what he’ll do. Probably something like engineering. It’s what’s expected isn’t it?_ _

__Yet Mike has never been good at doing what’s expected. Maybe he’ll major in English, and learn how to write good stories._ _

__Here is what Mike does know: his friends love him. His girlfriend loves him. And Mike loves her. He thinks their story must be the greatest story of all. And for all the years to come, he will protect his best friends, and they will protect him. They’re the party. It’s what they do._ _

_(Once upon a time there was a boy, and he met a girl. She gave him her hand and he held on tight. But then her hand was ripped from his. He kept waiting and hoping she’d come back. When she returned, it felt like flying and falling and a bit like dying. They walked along the path, sometimes slow, sometimes fast, but always hand in hand. They never lost each other, nor did they ever let go. They wandered happily forever, and always side by side.)_

**Author's Note:**

> If you got through this 19 page monstrosity, thank you. I don't like it as well as the last one, but that's okay. It's still good.
> 
>  
> 
> [my tumblr](http://www.stillusesapencil.tumblr.com)


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